CHAPTER II THE GREAT PREJUDICE.
CHAPTER II "What means then, less deceptive than those proposed by the philosophers and psychologists, do you bring us, rash author, for classifying, separating, defining, labelling human characters?" None. And this for the reason that such a means cannot exist. For I THERE ARE No CHARACTERS Listen to the admission which escapes from the author of "Characters" himself: "Men have no character, or, if they have, it consists in having none which is constant, which does not belie itself, and in which they are always recognizable They have opposing passions and contradictory failings; it is easier for them to unite extremes than to have a conduct one part of which springs naturally from another." What! All "unstable" to use the philosophic jargon of the day, and to be rejected, as a natural consequence, by the most celebrated contemporary classifications ! "But," it is explained, "La Bruyere let this cry escape but in a moment of discouragement; does not his undertaking itself bear witness that such was not his opinion?" It bears eloquent witness, on the contrary, to the sincerity and also the truth of this passage- Amusingly and exclusively ''characteristic," his figurines are not humanly complete. Compare, if you doubt it, the too logical Onuphre with Tartuffe, who contradicts himself so well! The silhouettes of our moralist move too automatically; we do not see their breasts heave with the respiration of universal life. We cannot turn one of them around without perceiving artifice. The drawing of a character is made, necessarily, from a fixed point, and the conception of it remains relative. Sylla, to us a monster, shines in the German histories, and Robespierre, before whom our greybeards palpitate with admiration, appears to the disciples of Taine but a vain and heartless pawn. But let us take, from La Bruyere himself, one of his portraits at random : Irene repairs at great expense to Epidaurus, sees Aesculapius in his temple and consults him on her ills. First she complains that she is tired and spent with fatigue, and the god declares that this comes from the length of the journey she has made ; she says that in the evening she has no appetite, the oracle orders that she dine lightly; she adds that she is subject to insomnia, and he advises her not to remain in bed except during the night; she asks him why she feels dull, and what is the remedy, the oracle replies that she should rise before noon and should occasionally walk; she tells him wine disagrees with her, he tells her to drink water; that she has indigestion, he advises her to diet; "my sight is failing," says Irene, "use glasses" says Aesculapius; "I myself am failing" she continues, "I am neither so strong nor so healthy as I was," - "that" says the god, "is because you are growing older." "But how can this languor be cured?" "The shortest way, Irene, is to die, as your mother and grandmother have done." "Son of Apollo," cries Irene, "what counsel are you giving me? Is this all of that science which men proclaim, and which makes you revered the world over? What are you telling me which is rare or mysterious? Did I not already know all these remedies you are recommending?" "Why, then, did you not use them," replies the god, "without coming so far to see me, and shortening your days by the fatigue of a long journey?" Most malicious, but most exact as a portrait, and most particular, is it not? Are not all the character's little weaknesses presented completely as complacently? It is Madame de Montespan who is the subject. At this name there come to mind other "characters" which might as legitimately be drawn from her; the extravagantly ambitious, the intemperate of speech, so ready with insult, the devotee of black masses, etc. No, the character does not exist any more than an exact portrait exists in painting. So many painters, so many colors, so many expressions, so many lines, even in each feature of the model! While as to photography, it is as has been scientifically demonstrated to those aberrants who do not see it with their own eyes the worst of lies. And if "there are no characters" it follows naturally that II THE SELF DOES Nor EXIST The self is but a formidable suggestion. The child is taught this false idea in exactly the same way in which a dog is taught to answer to a name, or, what comes to the same thing, to a certain whistle or blow of the whip, even to the point of responding to it by the most dangerous and painful feats. This blow of the whip imperative and categorical or its acoustic imitation, the whistle or call to a slave, has later been modified for each of us in a particular fashion, and one so much the more personally menacing, in the Name, that corner-stone, if I may now change the image, of the "I." The Name, first of the orders which the poor human being receives, will be the source of all the others, and the Name will dominate our whole existence. At bottom, we so well feel the artificial origin of the "self" that we admit a most strange hypothesis, namely that this "self," supposedly the essential, does not exist, so to speak, before the cabalistic age of seven years. Until then, parents and strangers agree in considering the "conscience," the "personality" of the child so feeble, so vague that his acts remain almost altogether "innocent." This "conscience," soon to be so responsible before the law, and even if not in theory, at least in the practice of daily life, quite as much so before the so-called determinist philosophy, this "conscience," this "self," this "individual" does not undertake his complete and this time overwhelming responsibility until the age, not less cabalistic, of three times seven years, an age at which he is invited by society, more imperiously from century to century, to the operations of military murder, of voting and of legal reproduction. Nevertheless, if the "self" is a "conscious personality," and rests on the "memory," it will be necessary to admit, for each one of us, at least several "selves," successive and totally independent of one another. Already the "self" of the twelfth year has forgotten that of the second year, and how few things has the adult retained in memory, compared to the immense forgetfulness of the self, emotional and reasoning, almost entirely effaced, of the twelfth year? A few episodes, external and distorted, are all that remain to us. If the memory alone connects, in our intimate consciousness, these "selves" so little like to one another, it is by how slender a thread! Many such threads break in silence daily; the greater part of those which subsist remain throughout the course of life buried in shadows in our vast Unconscious; a few, a very few, will, if we live long enough, come again to light perhaps a single time, only to disappear again forever. What were you doing at this hour, on this day of the month, in the year 1895? Or two months later in the following year, at three o'clock in the afternoon? Externally, on the contrary, a strict "responsibility" chains one to another, like so many galleyslaves, all those successive "selves," in such a manner that each of them exhausts itself carrying the weight of acts the greater part of which are completely effaced from the memory, and others of which appear but as the phantoms of inexplicable legends. So, through idolatry of Nature and her terrible enchainments, do we superstitiously hold the unity of the Self that chimera preferable to all charitable justice, to our happiness and even to hope! And now, it appears, not only this unity (sprung, I believe, from the brain of some unlucky arithmetician), but even the "I" has no existence! So many individuals mingle in the multiple personality, so many strangers are entering and departing by all the ceaselessly swinging doors, that it can no longer constitute a "social entity" nor a durable "moral creature." There are Selves which, the greater part of the time, let us acknowledge, hold all the scene with their uninterrupted march, dictating, disposing, acting on the way, and disappearing in the crowd without, which continues to launch toward that within its monotonous signals. Strange, it is none the less this incoherent march, these pressures of crowds unknown to one another and without tradition, which the philosopher proclaims an irreducible unity, in order to brandish it in his exalted imagination with such pride that he opposes it, quite alone, to the non-self schematized on the other hand. After which, our philosopher goes to bed, and as for his "self," does he even know whether or not he takes it with him, or in what place it hides among the chaos of his dreams? "There are two men in me!" In vain we recall this dreadful plaint which for three thousand years has come from humanity. In vain we show that only the existence of these "two men" is necessary to cause the fall of the systems, to shake tribunals amid their parody; in vain we detect the most energetic and single-minded individual accomplishing acts in direct contradiction of the unique Self acknowledged by him; he will stoop to lying, to playing the hypocrite, in order to maintain his idol upon its altar. And the most sincere and the most cynical of us do the same. In despite of truth, of justice, of charity, this dogma of the single Self imposes itself upon us. To it the freest among us sacrifices docilely his sincerity; worse yet, to this fundamental and diabolic talsehood we sacrifice obstinately the genius which each of us, with his complete humanity, possesses. For this falsehood of the single Self, of the Character, the Identity, with its bondage and responsibility, alone assures the social state. And so much the worse for you if your "self" alternates inexhaustibly between passion and judgment, making impossible for you the self-examination so much recommended! So much the worse if, precisely because one of your "selves" has said "white," the other should declare "black!" So much the worse if you do not know why at certain moments you hate the woman you love best, and that from the bottom of your heart your single heart! So much the worse if you deny every faith you hold, if you profane every virtue you possess! Of what importance to us are these puzzling trifles, of which your soul perishes? Falsify with us; we must, above all, in piling up the Systems and their complementary hypocrisies, maintain boldly the unity of the Self. But you do not find, you say, the same "self" at home and upon the rostrum, with your friend or your wife, before your janitor or with the mistress with whom you divest yourself of your "unity" so respectable and burdensome, in the presence of your superiors, or in solitude, or amid honors. ... If you are discovered contradicting yourself, you will declare that this time you were shamming, belying yourself, but previously Ah, if the human ego were one and unique, between whom then and whom, pray, would the struggles of conscience take place? What grotesque picture do you show me of a tribunal wherein the judge is alone and bounces from bench to bar, from side to side of the court? Would not one who, entering, observed such a spectacle, conclude with reason that the judge was a lunatic? You, nevertheless, are no lunatic; it must be, then, that your Self is not one, but several. The Self, full of illusions and of pride, which was so enterprising, was it not sincere? What a contrast to its successor, who, with courage broken, comes to bear witness sadly against it! Should you not henceforth abide by the experiences and declarations of this latter? But no, you cannot, on pain of perishing quickly with it; you can no more do so than you can begin life over. . . Each mistress who has loved you loved but one of your "selves," which differed from the others to such a degree as not to recognize any of those who had previously loved you, and the deep motive which puts a weapon in the hand of the jealous is her failure to find in the body of the deceiver the being she has loved; she desires to avenge his destruction upon the usurper! What do I say? Perhaps upon the same day, at an hour's interval, the wife and the mistress embrace in you two men, sometimes two really sincere, forgetful of one another, or perhaps even averting their eyes in the embarrassment (admit it, unlucky one!) of not comprehending one another. Where then is your unique ego, where is your true character? Say no more; invent no further falsehoods ! Ill A LITTLE COMMENTARY ON "THE IMITATION OF CHRIST" Thus the "character," which some go so far as to call the "self," is, in the dissolution thereof, revealed as that which both the one and the other are, AN APPEARANCE. This negative value of the "I" or individual character illuminates with a strong light the Christian doctrine, less and less understood, of humility ("But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the LOWEST room." Luke XIV, 10) and of the obedience which logically results from it. ("It is a great matter to live in obedience, to be under a hcg diet superior, and not to be at our own disposing . . go whither thou wilt, thou shalt find no rest but in humble subjection." IMITATION OF CHRIST, I, 9). "The highest and most profitable learning is the true knowledge and consideration of our selves. It is great wisdom and perfection to esteem nothing of ourselves." (I, 2). To humble oneself, in short, to obey, to deny and abase oneself, this is to destroy and overwhelm that negation, that mutilation which is the Self or so-called character, and let spring in its place the suppressed organs of the complete human being, the true image of God, as GENESIS says, and consequently of Jesus Christ. And the pious author cries to God, before that lacuna, that nonentity which is literally the self: "Thou accomplishest all things, Thou fillest all things, only the sinner Thou leavest empty!" (Ill, 3); then, turning toward us: "Of thyself thou always tendest to nothing." (Ill, 4). Do we understand, now, why "where heavenly grace enter in, and true charity, there will be no place for selflove." (111,9)? "But," it will be asked, "why put ones own Self, low as it may be, still lower than the other human selves which humble it?" They do not humble it nor make it suffer, for by themselves they can do nothing. Humiliations, torments, it is from God alone that we receive all these things, Whose instruments they are; from His hand, of which they are the members. "The truly patient man minds not by whom he is exercised, whether by his superiors, by one of his equals, or by an inferior; whether by a good and holy man or by one that is perverse and unworthy. But indifferently from every creature, how much soever or how often soever anything adverse befalls him, he takes it all thankfully as from the hand of God, and esteems it a GREAT GAIN." (Ill, 19.) And he will confess "I cannot say that any creature hath ever done me wrong." (Ill, 41.) The other "selves," the other characters, like our own, being in fact but appearances. # * # # * The "character" is but the impression upon others (who reflect it back to us and convince us of it) produced by one or several of our actions, undertakings, intentions divined or assumed, apologies, theories, etc., manifested once for all or repeated in various analogous forms. In reality, then, we find nothing solid, at the bottom of this conception, but the idea of action. And the present study might have taken as epigraph that affirmation which was thought premature in THE THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC SITUATIONS: "Characters ARE what they DO." Now, if action, taken abstractly, may be defined by us as the shock of two forces, the conflict of two beings, it consists to consider it by halves, that is to say each of these two beings in an impulse, in an act, in a simple movement. This, in turn, is but the passage from one attitude to another. . . All is thus reduced, in the end. not to Characters in themselves, but to Attitudes,